Whilst throwing away trash I stumbled on a piece of paper with a poem I wrote who-knows-how-long ago.

My room was dirty. :\

Anywhosits, I've decided to share the poem I wrote, lost, and subsequently found with you. (I'm leaving all the grammar, punctuation and capitalization exactly how I found them. Some of it's kind of weird... so... sic!)

Here 'tis:

A modest tribute in a thousand words

could utter we

To the flowing of the faerie's sigh

Wishing we could see

What heaven hath brought with Michael's name

A conqueror of Smiles

A lover's game

From Something past to something more

With someone laughing

And Someone's war

Shall be to see what they can make

Of this and that

of give and take.

﻿Yeah... I don't get it either. :\

If it ever meant anything--a claim I cannot swear to--I have forgotten it entirely.

So, really, this is the question: What does it mean to YOU?

Comment and tell me. ^_^

(Yes, I know this one is a quickie... but I had naught else to brighten your day with at this very early moment.)

Monday, December 5, 2011

Note the proper uses of "Who," "Whom," "Who's," and "Whose." -_- (This will be really embarrassing if I used one of them wrong...)

So, this post is just an update on some of the peeps I mention a lot in my blog. Just so you know what's going on in their lives... and so I can mock them. :D

To begin with, my most ardent follower, Satchel.

Satchel, as you know, is married to Sheriff Woody, and they have three sons, Jose, Jimp, and Lex. As you also know (if you read my posts) Satchel and Woody are expecting another baby.

A "Baby Boulder" is like a "Baby Bump" ... only... BIGGER ... but iz a cute kind of "BIGGER"

The new baby will be the fourth minion from Satchel Minions, Inc. Will technically be my fifth minion though. Mr. Wilson (not previously blogged about) was my first true minion, but I haven't heard from him for a while.

Honestly, I would never have even considered watching Ponies if it weren't for the unending blah-blahing that Queenie is capable of.

I'm proud to say I've lived through a few episodes. o.O No one can ever accuse me of not being open anyway...

So that's where they stand right now.

Have you ever met a Mr. Weirdman???(Smooth segue, eh?)

It's that one guy with an obnoxious mustache (or a mullet) and ball cap who rambles on and on about everything and nothing whilst making strange faces and leaving you no recourse but to nod and say "uhuh."Mr. Weirdman either the life of the party or the bane of the...other party... :\

He's the guy that brings a gun to a tornado.

True fact.

It was a stormy afternoon not too many months ago when we were on our porch watching the weather (as Kansans are wont to do) and our neighbor came over. He was wearing shorts, no shoes, a T-shirt, a ball cap and... a holster? He held a beer in one hand, and a revolver in the other.

He was the mullet kind of Weirdman

"Here," He handed Evic his beer, "Hold this while I load."

The End! :D

(Don't you hate it when writers bring the story to the first interesting instance and then... stop?)

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

I'm a geek. Geeks, traditionally, suffer from an extreme lack of fashion sense. So what am I supposed to say about fashion?

Whatever I want to. Just because I'm a card-carrying Geek (President and co-founder of GAEK--"Geeks And Enthusiastic Kindred") doesn't mean I'm always wrong... just "unconventional." I like to think of myself as "eccentric" ... it sure beats the hell out of "nut-butter crazy."

So what's new in fashion? Well, to really know what's "new" we have to know what's old.

We've gone from wearing animals to wearing cotton and synthetic fabrics... not sure how. (I'm not a fashion historian.)

How did we DO that?

﻿ Then, apparently, some of us (one of us) decided to devolve, and went back to wearing animals...﻿

But this time... their Flesh!

Okay, in all honesty, can we really call Lady Gaga "one of us"?﻿ I mean--don't get me wrong--I love her music and her eccentricities, but she's kind of... a freak? Is that appropriate? o.O

I don't know... but somehow when she went back to animals she forgot that we ONLY WEAR THE SKIN!

It reminds me of that Far Side cartoon by Gary Larson in which a caveman is advertising his new invention to his carcass-clad brethren by telling them (something like) "with this new knife you only have to wear the SKIN of that animal!"

I couldn't find the comic... otherwise I'd post it... or at least quote it correctly. But you get the idea, don't you?

Well too bad! >:OWe're moving on. -_-

Let me introduce you to my alter ego: Ralphe le Fashion le Man! *("Ralphe" is pronounced just like "Rafe" but spelled much more fashion-ishly.)﻿

~Both in Doodle and in Photo~

You can tell by my purple shirt, red bow tie, suspenders, slacks and white socks with black sneakers (the last two of which you can't see in this picture) that I AM the greatest fashion expert on this side of the Nile.﻿.. or the Rockies... whichever.

As the Doctor says, "bow ties are cool."

(You know you're right when you get your fashion lines from a sci-fi show.)

Where was I?

Oh, yeah... I was going to disregard not being a fashion historian and tell you about the history of fashion.

Well... in the beginning we were all red-faced and nudists.

Soon, however, the social burden of always standing behind an appropriately placed plant became too much, and someone invented portable plants.

Then (finally!) someone had the great idea of slaughtering animals to clothe ourselves. ﻿

PETA was still a long way off...

And that's where we're skipping ahead a few thousand years to get past all the freaky weird fashions of Revolutionary France and stuff et cetera.

On the SDA Facebook page I asked my followers to give me pictures of "outrageous fashion." As usual, only Satchel responded.

:\

The rest of you have failed me. You deserve to be disciplined!

"I should discipline you! Five times a day! With bricks! Uh-huh... in a pillowcase." -_-

^You get bonus points if you know what I'm quasi-quoting there. ;)

Anyway... let's take a look at some of Satchel's photographs.

...okay let's just look at ONE of Satchel's photographs:

"I'm the law around these parts..."

This picture is Satchel and her husband, Sheriff Woody. This IS how they dress everyday!

...I wish...

Wouldn't it be fun if more people forsook modern fashion, and took a trip to the waybackwhen when we all wore DIFFERENT fashions?

Don't worry... I don't mean anything crazy like the 80's or anything! Just like... 1864...

Okay, so that's just my fantasy.

Whatever.

Let's ask ourselves a question now: What makes fashion good? What makes fashion bad? What makes fashion fashionable and what makes the unfashionable unfashioned? Are there unfashionistas out there to let us know? (Do we just call them "geeks"?) Are you an unfashionista? Or a fascist? A fattist? (someone who is prejudiced and discriminates based on body fat ratios...)

﻿

Fattism at work... :(

﻿ All right... I'm just going to admit it. I really don't have anything to say about fashion.

:\

You should still hang on my every word though... because that's FUN!

...or so I hear...

Whatever. You can all blame Indiana for this travesty of a post... she made me do it about fashion. :('

Oh well...

Ciao for now.

And Happy Birthday to Doctor Who--quite possibly the greatest fashion icon of... somewhere... somewhen... who knows... (DW was first aired on November 23rd, 1963... it is 48 years old today.)

Monday, November 14, 2011

We quit home about 3:00 in the afternoon, and arrived in Aurora, CO. about 11:00-ish. Of course we entered a new time zone and gained an hour, so the trip was actually about eight hours long.
Anywho... so I'm in Aurora.

Is this a "yay" situation?

Sort of... ish.

I am going to spend the next two weeks in the boring confines of a hospital room, but (on the bright side) I should come out the other end feeling less like a dead man in a sand pile.

Interesting note: I discovered today that the same company that supplies toilet-paper holders to icky-ish gas stations also supplies rubber gloves to nice health clinics. o.O Does this inspire confidence in you?

It does me. -_-

Who better to trust with health than TP people?

Besides the NAZIs, of course.

﻿﻿

Sanitary NAZIs

﻿﻿ Luckily the glove-wearing people I have to deal with aren't NAZIs. No one likes NAZI doctors... I am part Jewish, ya know.

I have promised Indiana, or The Ingenue at Oddbits and Grimcracks that I would do a post about Fashion sometime in the next two weeks. So look forward to that.

What she posted was "thanksgiving and birthdays on the 24 of nov. 1982" [sic].

After a day or two NO ONE ELSE wanted me to blog about anything. :( Obviously my other fans hate me. However, I'm willing to do this blog dedicated to the ideas of Satchel, because I'm lobbying her to name her next child Pavel... even if it's a girl. :D

So, first, we will delve into Thanksgiving.It's a day for giving thanks.

Nuff said?

Now for birthdays on November 24, 1982... >:)

A little bit of math (2011-1982=29) shows us that any person or persons with this birthday is about to become AO. Which, as everyone knows, is "Almost Old."

You see... ages work like this:0-1 Baby2-4 Toddler5-12 Kid13-19 Teenager (aka mentally imbalanced individual)20 Limbo21-25 Young Adult26-29 Adult30-45 Old46-65 "Middle aged"66-79 Young at Heart80-89 Old (again)90-99 Very Old100+ Ancient Relic of the Dinosaurs...

Anyone born on November 24th of 1982 is approaching their last year of "Adult," and is almost Old! Shortly (very shortly) we'll have to drum said person out of the ranks of the youthful. :\ Unless he or she is a celebrity. Somehow they can stay young for decades...

Go figure.

Now, if we do some assuming, we should assume that Satchel wanted us to blog about birthdays on November 24th of 1982 because HER birthday is on November 24th of 1982.

I can see the tabloids now:

SATCHEL TURNS ALMOST OLD! REGRETS NOT NAMING CHILD "PAVEL"!

Obviously we have to prevent this from happening.

We have a few options:1) Make Satchel into a celebrity (this can buy her a few more years).2) Kill her before her birthday (sadly, not a legal option).3) Get her to sign a contract legally naming her child (be it male or female) Pavel.4) All of the above.

Personally, I'm a fan of #1... sadly, the most celebratory thing she's done is give me minions. :\ Not many people gonna buy her CD for that.

Her brothers, dad, and husband are big and scary, so killing her is basically off the table.

Number 4 is just stupid.

That leaves us only one option.

Satchel, if you're reading this, NAME YOUR CHILDPAVEL! Or Melville... I like Melville too...

Sunday, October 9, 2011

﻿Well... SHE wasn't scary, per se, but what she DID was scary, per se. I like to say "per se."Allow me to elaborate.I was driving (in a car) on my way to drop off some movies that I had rented and were late. Anywhosits, as I was driving (in a car) I was messing with the radio. Because I was messing with the radio I didn't notice the light in front of me turn yellow.Oh No!As it was, I probably wouldn't have stopped anyway, because I was too close to the intersection to stop, but I passed through a yellow light.And that's when I saw a cop car coming from the other direction.

The She Cop was inside. (I coul see her...)Suddenly she pulled into the turning lane, and, just after I passed her, she made a U-turn (possibly illegally) and got into traffic RIGHT BEHIND ME!I shit you not.So, to recap, I ran a yellow light, she cop made an illegal U-turn to pull into traffic right behind me, and I am not shitting you.I was nervous.But she didn't turn on her lights.So I kept going.She stayed right behind me.But she didn't turn on her lights.So I kept going.

Finally I turned left, and she went straight, and, alas, we never saw each other again.

But she scared me.

My theory is that since I could see her, she could probably see me too. When she was driving towards me she must have spotted me, and been awe-struck by my excessive cuteness.

That's right. She wanted a piece of this.

Obviously what happened was this: the She Cop had never seen anything so beautiful as me in her whole life, and she turned and followed me PURELY for the joy of gazing at me with utter adulation for a few brief moments more.

It was probably the highlight of her life... and the closest I'll get to a girlfriend.

So we were both excited when we discovered a film school was opening up in a city close to us.

"Yipee!" ...or whatever.

They were going to call it "Brain Flame" or some other name that evokes graphic images of combustible craniums... I still might want to go there, so I don't want to mock them by their actual name. :P

We promptly found their website, and I e-mailed them.

No reply.

Months later...

...still no reply.

Evic e-mailed them.

No reply.

Months later...

...still no reply.

Since both Mom Lady and Dad Man are supportive of our dreams...

...when they found themselves in said city, only blocks away from said film school, Mom Lady said, "Let's stop by there, and see if they'll talk to us.

They stopped by.

They talked to them.

When Mom Lady and Dad Man returned home they told us all about it. It was AMAZING!!!

Evic and I resolved to go visit them ourselves.

So, a short time later, Evic and I drove up to visit Brain Flame.

Next door to the film school was another "university" with a strange name. I told Evic it was probably a brothel-girl training school. She disagreed. Something about it being illegal, and that my mind was in the gutter.

Whatever.

We made it to Brain Flame.

Upon arrival... we found the doors locked. :(

It seemed that there was a conspiracy to keep Evic and I away from Brain Flame forever.

We discussed the annoyingness of not being able to contact them on the way home.

When I returned home and told Mom Lady about it she said "Oh, we didn't talk to anyone inside the Brain Flame building. You have to go into the brothel school and ask to see the Brain Flame people, and they'll come talk to you."

"So it is a brothel school?"

Okay, at this point I'm making up the brothel school stuff... maybe my mind IS in the gutter???

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

One night I
was in my room, sitting in bed, and enjoying writing a story about someone or
something or whatever. Pen in hand, tea by my side, paper in front of me… *ah* …the
only thing that could have made it better is if the tea was soda and the pen
was candy… and the paper a movie starring Eddie Izzard, Ed Helms and Will
Smith. Let’s throw Keisha Castle-Hughes and Karen Gillan in there for balance.

(Of course I
would still wanting to be writing
said movie, and would need at least a $100,000,001.82 budget. I’m not picky.)

This film
would be entitled: “Snow White Powder and
the Seven Dealers” it would win all kinds of awards (including “Coolest Writer”)
and make me famous.

Me getting
famous:

While I was
trying to get famous, I innocently glanced at the floor.

*Was that
movement?*

I glanced
again (this time not so innocently)…

*GASP!* IT WAS MOVEMENT!

It was a
spider…

…of death.

But it wasn’t
just ANY spider of death. This was, I shit you not, the biggest, baddest, baby-eatin’est
son of an eight-legged, creepy, crawly, she-devil I have EVER seen in my entire
life.

Then it began
running towards me.

Now, let me
take a moment to say that I know I suffer from arachnophobia. I know that what
I actually saw was probably something like this:

But that
knowledge doesn’t help me.

It doesn’t
help me one bit.

What I SAW,
What I remember seeing, what has been
seared with a hot-iron into my memory FOREVER
looked like this:

I was
terrified.

I was Petrified.

Mortified.

Stupefied.

By a spider.

That was
charging me.

I jumped up.

And I
screamed.

Like a girl.

And it ran
under my bed.

At the sound
of my heart exploding, Behemoth, my brother—who was asleep in his bed across
the room, woke up… ish.

He (kind of)
opened his eyes and (sort of) looked to see why I was screaming like a banshee.

Of course, by
this point, I was merely hyperventilating.

So he did
this:

And then he
went back to sleep.

I was (for all
intents and purposes) alone in my room with a giant, man-eating demon sent
straight from the bowels of HELL to
torment me for my SINS!

There was a
spider in there too.

Okay, I kid…

…the spider WAS
the demon.

Somehow (I don’t
remember exactly how) I escaped the bedroom with my life.

I was
determined(ish) to defeat this atrocity of creation, and reclaim my right as
the ONLY ONE who could hide under my bed.

But I needed
to find something to aid me in my quest.

I went looking
for a flashlight.

I couldn’t
find the bloody flashlight.

Damn.

I stumbled on
an electric lantern.

After I got up
again, I took it into my room and tried to peer under the bed. This is
difficult to do when you refuse to get closer than ten feet from the bed in
question. (I wasn’t going to stick my face down there for it to feast on!)
Luckily my bed is raised a bit high off the ground, and none of my blankets
were hanging down. So I could see decently well as I looked for the beast
below.

I didn’t find
it.

The next day
my mother brought a flashlight in from the truck.

FML

I still couldn’t find it.

Actually, I
never found it.

To this day a
demon-possessed spider dwells in my room… and I sleep on the couch.

Thursday, September 22, 2011

On Tuesday I went to my Alma Mater to attend my first school event as an alumnus. -_- I am very proud of myself for knowing those words.

I was invited back to participate in the county famous "Writer's Corner," where writer's read each other their work, and otherwise blab on about stuff and other stuff and poetry and short stories and not-so-short short stories and songs etc. Basically, get fifty cool people in a room, and let them share their mutual love of words.

Yes.

We're geeks.

Get over it.

I didn't share any excerpts from my blog. That would have been interesting. o.O Thoughts are turning, wheels are flying!

Anyway. You don't really care about that, do you? You just want to see me get slapped.

You're mean like that.

FINE!

I'll begin by introducing Hugglez.

This is Hugglez:

She REALLY IS that bubbly. -_-

Hugglez isn't the one who slapped me.

I think she feels bad when she uses a fly swatter.

Trust me, I make her mad on purpose, and the worst she's done is glare at me.

Anyway... after the county famous Writer's Corner, I decided to hang out with some of the students who AREN'T alumni. These included Hugglez, Indiana (who I knew from when I was still studying there) and Buttons (who I had never met before ever in my entire life even on the moon).

This is Indiana:﻿﻿

Indiana's the unassuming type.

Now, some may say "Hey! Why didn't Indiana get as colorful and crazy a picture as Hugglez did?" Well, the short answer is because I haven't known her as long, and don't know as many personality quirks about her to spice up the painting with. The long answer is that I was tired when I painted this one in the middle of the night, and was just glad my art somewhat resembled a human.

Whatever.

Here's Buttons:

This is the caption... imagine it says something witty.

So, as I said, we were hanging out after the county famous (you do get the joke, don't you? it's a play on "world famous") Writer's Corner.

Hugglez was upset because jerks had been jerky to her.

Buttons and I attempted to comfort her... because we're nice that way.

And, of course, comforting her involved pretend-fighting with her... because we're mean that way.

In the course of the pretend-fight Buttons made to hit her. But, of course, Hugglez just laughed and said "You wouldn't actually hit me and make it hurt."

And Buttons said "Yeah, I'd feel bad."

"Why?" Hugglez asked.

I thinks... she may have said something else, but whatever. I replied:

"Because there are a couple gentlemen left in the world."

Gentlemen NEVER hit women. (Unless said woman is coming at you with a chainsaw... then it's perfectly acceptable... but Hugglez was chainsaw deprived... so we couldn't hit her.)

Then, to illustrate the point that being gentlemen, who never strike women, isn't necessarily the same thing as being pansies, who never strike anyone, Buttons hit me.

Hard.

In the face.

It looked like this.

Slightly exaggerated.

Okay, okay, okay... fine.

He didn't laugh maniacally, and I didn't fall over and painfully writhe in a pool of my own blood.

Actually it was more of a *slap*tap* no death.

But Hugglez did freak out. She couldn't figure out why he hit me.

What can I say? It's a guy thing.

Buttons and I shook hands, and have been friends ever since... Tuesday.

Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Did the title pique your interest? (I almost put "peak your interest" which, I suppose, could have made sense if I was asking if the heighth of your interest was reached when reading the title of this post. But I wasn't... so that would have been wrong.)

Where was I?

Oh yeah!

I was running with scissors to save Behemoth from shorts.

But I'm not there yet... First I have to explain something.

Behemoth and I are brothers. He's the cool one.

Behemoth, aka "the cool one."

In fact, if I may be honest, sometimes I hateam annoyed by Behemoth. He's my "little" brother, he's supposed to be LITTLER than me... not three times my size.

How am I supposed to teach my brother anything if I can't beat him up when he makes a mistake?

Answer: I don't. I stay the hell out of his way, is what I do.

But, we're friends. Despite my never being able to teach him anything via the route of physical abuse, we have been endeared to each other in many ways.

One of the events that resulted in our close, brotherly kinship that neither of us is quite willing to call "love" I will endeavor to relate to you here.

It is an episode of our mutual lives that I like to call:

In which I Run with Scissors to Save Behemoth from Shorts

But you knew that already.

Well, you should know that, despite Behemoth being the "cool" one, as youngsters neither of us kept up with the most recent fashion trends. Actually, whenever possible, we would use last year's clothes!!!!

Okay, yeah, I still do that.

So what?

I'mma geek, I can if I want. -_-

Moving on... One spring day we were hauling out last summer's clothes to see what still fit and what was garbajo. (That's pronounced Garr-Bay-Hoe... my word for "garbage" ... and it has nothing to do with Jorge Garbajosa, who I didn't even know existed until I did a google on "garbajo" to make sure it wasn't slang for something horrible like baby-panda-slapping or anything like that that has no place in my blog.)

It wasn't long before Behemoth found himself by a tub of clothes, looking for anything he could salvage.

Behemoth and the Clothes, happy together in the living room.

As he dug through the box/tub thingamajig, he found a pair of shorts.

"I remember these!" He said, "I wore these every day last summer!"

The saddest part about his exclamation is that (at that time he was VERY young) he may very well have wore them every single day last summer. :\ Either that or the fact that he was surprised he remembered a garment from a mere nine months ago. How bad WAS his memory?

Sorry... I'm digressing again...

The important thing is that Behemoth found his shorts.

He danced off to the bathroom to try them on, and see if they still fit.

Okay, I lie. He didn't "dance" off to the bathroom. Even then he was too cool to "dance off to the bathroom."

I think it's one of the immutable laws of nature that no one can simultaneously be cool and "dance off to the bathroom." Though, one can be a geek and "skip to their loo," which I do on a fairly frequent basis.

Anyway. I continued searching for good clothes.

Wow! I LOVE these things!

After a decent amount of time, I forgot about Behemoth, and didn't realize that he had never come back from the bathroom.

Non-returnance (it's a neology, run with it) from the bathroom bodes only for evil.

Shortly thereafter I heard a small voice from the direction of the lavatory.

"Rafe... hey, Rafe!"

"Yeah?" I answered.

"You remember those shorts?"

"Yeah."

"Well..." He paused. He gulped, "Well, I got them On."

I blinked a couple of times.

"You don't know how sorry I am for you right now."

Talk about TIGHTY whities... only the shorts weren't white... but you get the idea.

"Rafe, can you get me scissors or something, I just gotta get these off."

"Yes! I shall assist ye, my too big little brother!"

I darted off. I got scissors. I darted back.

Remarkably, Jamaal was there.

"Um, Rafe... what are you doing?" She asked.

"I'm running with scissors to save behemoth from his shorts!" I shouted.

"What?" She took a sip of her soda.

*Sigh* I sighed. I quickly explained the horrible situation in which Behemoth had found himself.

"Okay," She looked concerned, "Just make sure he's careful what he cuts..."

"Oh, yeah..."

I think we suddenly shared a mutual horrible thought.

Our horrible thought.

Thankfully, for everyone involved, he did NOT cut anything important.

The shorts became garbajo, Behemoth became a big, cool, deep-voiced man, and all the girls love him. (I'm actually kind of jealous...)

About Me

My name is Raphael John Biltz, but I usually go by "Rafe."
I have an Associate's Degree in creative writing (I'm working on a BGS in film and media with a minor in English) and my passion is in stories and language.
I fancy myself a humorist, and attempt to share some of that humor on my blogs. I also have a great interest in the welfare of the world and occaisionally blog about my political and religious views.